You are seeing both the menu box and the box "Tap here for MENU" because your browser does not support Javascript. Normally only one of those would display depending upon your screen size.

Dinner with Muslim Jewish Forum Executive to celebrate my MBE award

The award clearly recognises the work of the Forum. My 5 ½ minutes speech explains how the Forum has changed my life, and my analysis of why it has succeeded.

5 September 2016

On Sunday 4 September, at my own expense, I hosted a dinner for members of the Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester's current Executive Committee, and some past members, at JS Restaurant, Kings Road, Prestwich, Manchester. The venue was chosen because the restaurant is kosher, enabling both Jews and Muslims to attend and eat together.

The dinner was held to celebrate my having been awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List published on 10 June 2016.

For services to Community Cohesion and Inter-faith Relations in Greater Manchester.

Greater Manchester”

While the nomination was made without my knowledge, after the list was published my wife Tahara informed me that the nomination was prepared by Dr Jacqueline Lewis, a member of the Forum's Executive, and supported in writing by several other current and past Executive members. Even without knowing that, I would have wanted to celebrate with the Executive, since it was clearly the work of the Forum that was being recognised by the MBE award to me.

I gave a short impromptu speech during the dinner. Amongst other things, I said:

"The Forum has changed my life. Before we established it, I knew Jewish people as professional colleagues and clients of my firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers, but I had no social contacts in the Jewish community. Despite living in Manchester for over 50 years, I had never set foot inside a synagogue. The Forum has lead to strangers becoming acquaintances who then became colleagues, who then became friends. The Forum is still going strong after 11 years because we set out with realistic goals, and operate in a way that makes sense for the people involved with the Forum."

The speech, which is only 5 ½ minutes long was recorded by me, and can be listened to below. It was recorded using an iPhone. As the restaurant was busy, there is a fair amount of background noise, but my words can be heard quite clearly.

A group photograph taken after the dinner is below.

The Disqus comments facility below allows you to comment on this page. Please respect others when commenting.
You can login using any of your Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Disqus identities.
Even if you are not registered on any of these, you can still post a comment.

Everything on this site, other than comments made using the comments facility, is written by me in a personal capacity and should not be attributed to any organisation with which I may be associated. None of it constitutes professional advice, and no legal responsibility is accepted to anyone who acts, or refrains from acting, as a result of reading or watching anything posted on this site.

Comments made on this site using the comments facility are the responsibility of the individual comment authors. If you consider that any comment defames you, please email Mohammed Amin using the facility on the "Contact me" page, specifying the page, the comment author and the date and time of the comment, and the reasons it is defamatory so that the comment can be removed.

The ownership of this site is stated on the page "Legal ownership of this site". Mohammed Amin is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.